


Proof

by avocadoave



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-05
Updated: 2015-10-05
Packaged: 2018-04-19 18:56:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4757291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avocadoave/pseuds/avocadoave
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dana Scully has a dirty little secret.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Proof

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: Early days / around the time of IWTB / pre-revival. 
> 
> Not betaed. This is my first X-Files fic, so…we’ll see how it goes. It’s just an idea that wouldn’t leave my head, so I had to write it down.

**_i._ **

  
Dana Scully pulled a Sharpie out of her purse, tugged the lid off with her teeth, and with practiced precision drew a heart on the flaking, powder blue paint. She wasn’t the first vandal to leave her mark. Initials, phone numbers and an assortment of crude phrases and penis art peppered the walls of the ladies’ restroom of the Gas n’ Go on SR-whatever, 22 miles outside Middle-of-Nowhere, America.

She wrote DS + FM inside the heart, recapped the pen and dropped it in her bag. She smiled. This wasn’t the first place she had done this. Bathroom walls and metal stalls from Seattle to Miami and Bar Harbor to San Diego had been adorned with a similar motif. It was her dirty little secret. Her cliched rebellion. An act befitting a 7th grader rather than a federal agent with a medical degree. She couldn’t tell Mulder how she felt, but she had no qualms about leaving the dark mark of her love in towns so insignificant they didn’t appear on a map.

She climbed into the car and handed him a styrofoam cup of coffee, placing her bottle of water in the cup holder between the seats.

“Thanks, Scully,” he said, taking a sip. “Ugh, God, I rescind my gratitude. This is awful.”

“Mulder, we’re at a truck stop in the middle of the worlds largest cornfield. I'm sorry, but they were fresh out of Kenya dark roast.”

She brushed an errant hair behind her ear.

“Why is your hand all black?” he asked.

“What?” she examined her hand. Her fingers and palm are streaked with purple-black smudges. “Oh, um, you know, the inside of the bathroom was covered in graffiti. Some people…” she huffs in mock annoyance.

“You wrote ‘Scully was here,’ didn’t you?” he teased.

“More like, ‘For a good time call Foxy Mulder, 202-555-37—‘” she deadpanned.

“You did not!”

She shrugged. “Guess you’ll never know.”

“You’re up to something.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “You wrote a dirty limerick.”

“ _There once was a man from Nantucket…_ ”

“Go on,” he urged.

She rolled her eyes. “You got me, Mulder. I, Dana Katherine Scully, like to secretly vandalize public restrooms.”  
He laughed at the absurdity of the idea and she bit back a smile as he turned onto another two-lane highway in the direction of their next case.

  
**_ii._**

  
There were more rainy days on the road than she could count. The skies would open up and the windows of their economy rental cars would, without fail, fog up. He would fiddle with the A/C or the heat and she would draw tiny hearts and write their initials in the condensation, quickly wiping all evidence away with the heel of her hand before he could catch on.

“Whatcha doing over there, Scully?” he wondered, as she wiped down the glass with singular purpose.

“Could you turn on the defrost or something? Or at least try not to be such a mouth breather?” She deflected.

“The defrost is on, it’s just weak. What’s the matter, Scully, haven’t you ever steamed up a car with a guy before?”

“Shut up, Mulder.”

  
**_iii._**

  
In increments undetectable to the human eye and heart, time and darkness and silence had pulled them apart. She went to Maryland to be closer to her mother and he returned to Alexandria, both abandoning their West Virginia outpost. One rainy Sunday morning, filled to the brim with coffee and nostalgia, she returned to the ramshackle house. It was faded and surrounded by grey sky, it looked as if Mother Nature had turned the saturation of the world down to 50 percent.

The place was vacant. A for sale sign hung limply on the metal gate. Poor Randy Connors of RC Realtors had been trying in vain to sell the place for years. She guessed the pool of renters interested in extreme isolation was limited. And frightening. She parked her car and traversed the muddy drive. She climbed the creaky stairs, stepping carefully onto the rotting slats of the covered porch. She ran her fingers over the railing, feather-light, to avoid splinters. There it was, DS + FM carved crudely into the wood. It was still here, even if they weren’t. It had survived, even though they hadn’t. She dipped her finger into the indentations, tracing each letter. She wasn’t sure Mulder had ever noticed her sad attempt at leaving a legacy, and if he had, he’d never mentioned it.

There is so little tangible evidence of her feelings for him. Of their life together. There had never been any rings, no binding legal document, no tattoo of his name on her hip. Nothing more than a few photographs tucked away in a sock drawer. She has her collection of silvery scars and puckered marks from their basement years, a lifetime ago, but she doesn’t like to count those.

How could they have been together for so long, as partners, friends and lovers and there was no proof? She pulls her phone from her jacket and snaps a picture of the railing and walks back to her car. Now there is, she thinks.

  
_(Pre-IWTB)_

_He poked his head into the bathroom where she was putting on her mascara._

_“Scully?”_

_"Hmm?” she met his eyes in the mirror._

_“Are you planning on murdering me in my sleep?”_

_“Not today. Why?” She asked, spinning around to face him._

_He held up the large hunting knife. The one she had used for her late night wood carving._

_“This was on your nightstand.”_

_“Sometimes I sleep with it under my pillow.”_

_“Why?”_

_“Monsters under the bed,” she said kissing him, heading to the closet. “I would think you of all people would understand that.”_

_He stood fixed, staring after her._

  
He got an alert on his phone that a new photo was just added to the cloud. They had separated everything else, but he and Scully still had a joint cloud. There was something oddly poetic about that.

He swiped the message and the photo popped up. It was a close up of a heart etched crudely into wood. It took him a minute to make out the interior. Words? No, they were initials—DS + FM. The porch in West Virginia. He smiled. He liked the idea that this proof of her love for him lived somewhere out in the ether.

  
_**iv.**_

  
She stepped from the shower. The marble bathroom thick with steam. She was about to use her palm to clear a spot on the mirror when an old impulse struck her. She took her finger and drew a heart and DS + FM in the condensation. Her lips quirked at the juvenile act.

“Dana, c’mon we’ve got to go!” His voice called.

“Take the bags down and get a cab,” she called back. “I just need three minutes.”

“Okay. I’ll meet you downstairs.”

She slipped on her dress and stepped into her shoes. Pulled her hair up into a ponytail. She reluctantly wiped away the heart, needing a reflective surface to apply a little makeup.

She stepped out into the bedroom of their suite at the Four Seasons, rummaged in her bag and found only a leaky blue ballpoint from her bank. She improvised, pulled a black Chanel eyeliner pen from her cosmetic pouch, and drew a heart with the usual initials inside one of the dresser drawers.

She glanced around the room with its Frette linens, 80-inch flat screen and floor to ceiling windows and longed for those days of scratchy sheets, paper-thin walls, three cable channels, and him.

DS would always love FM and now every guest in room 1444 would know, too.

The man hailing the cab. This fancy room. This life. All this should make her happy. She ran a finger over her hidden drawing, smearing the still-wet ink. The letters, the heart, they were a little messy, a little smudged. That seemed about right.

  
_**Fin.** _


End file.
